Photos After the Rain

I thought my garden was going to be shut out of the rain-game when we'd had none by Tuesday morning. The many posts by rejoicing Austin bloggers made me glad for them, but glum for our part of town. Then the Roulette Wheel of Rain spun around to NW Austin on Tuesday afternoon, and by Wednesday morning the gauge showed an inch-and-three quarters of precious moisture. Hallelujah!

Another half-inch fell Thursday evening - from feeling unlucky we went to feeling very lucky. This afternoon a bonus 3/4 inch came down a little too fast and too hard with more possible over the weekend.

A few weeks ago, worried as the drought continued, I turned on John Dromgoole's call-in radio show, and heard his voice remind us what kind of leafy green vegetables we should plan to plant in late summer and assure us that when the August rains came our gardens would perk up.
Yes, he said when - not if. Maybe John was whistling in the dark, but he made me feel better, and he was right. During the last few dry months I've hand-watered the borders, shrubs and trees and each day I filled the four birdbaths. Enough moisture traveled through the ground to keep the strips of lawn adjacent to those watered areas alive. In the shady parts of the yard the grass isn't lush but it's alive. In sunny places any grass more than 2-feet from an irrigated section is brown. St. Augustine doesn't go dormant - it dies - so there are completely dead patches and the parkway's in sad shape.
Now is the time to watch, wait, think, and take photos so I can analyze what worked and what didn't and what should be changed. Did you notice that there are photos today? The last camera didn't work out, so Philo and I bought a different point-and-shoot camera and are experimenting with it. It's fairly simple but with more settings than my old EasyShare.

Unless noted, these photos were uploaded without enhancements - no contrast, no color balancing or sharpening - they're just cut and reduced to 130KB or less - my usual blog photo size - so I can test how they look on the page.

There's enough detail to see that while the blossom of the Blue Butterfly Flower/Clerodendrum ugandense has gone to seed since GBBD, new buds are forming and the blue bloom will go on. I can show you the way rained-on Silver gray Lambs Ears/Stachys byzantina look with orange Crocosmia.
The camera can get in close enough to catch the way neither heat, drought nor storms could destroy the Balloon Flowers/Platycodon 'Fuji White'.
I can get your ideas on why one Persian Shield/Strobilanthes dyerianus plant responded to the rain with entire branches wilting and looking awful...while the second Persian Shield 4 feet away looks refreshed and revived. One was in shade and the other in sun when I took the photos, but in the course of a day they get the same mixture of filtered light.

I can share my excitement at taking a picture of this bee on the Salvia coccinea. It wouldn't be a big deal to most of you but it's my best Bee Photo to date - the EasyShare couldn't do this much.

Today there are no Passionvine flowers, but there's a Gulf Fritillary caterpillar - the first I've seen this year.

Today you don't just hear the news that the seedling Blue Butterfly Pea/Clitorea ternatea vines have reached for the top of the obelisk and are in bloom - I can show it to you
I can also show you a crummy photo of the Cypress Vine/Ipomoea quamoclit which gets daily visits from hummingbirds. Here's an even worse look at one of the hummingbirds - even after I used Photoshop Elements on the picture. My hummers don't hover at feeders but zip quickly around an entire garden planted to entice them. There's nowhere I can hide to sneak a snap so I took it with auto settings from about 15-20 feet away. Even a bad photo of a hummingbird is a triumph when it's the only hummingbird photo in 4 years of trying! I think of this little blur more as evidence than art - Mary's photos of the birds at her feeders can be art. Buying a better camera can't turn me into a bird blogger or a bug blogger or a macro-flower blogger - but I hope that this one will let me illustrate or document the things I want to talk about.

For two years I've tried to take a photo of this native rainlily for the blog. It's called Copper Lily or Habranthus tubispathus . I couldn't make either my EasyShare or the returned camera capture it, but today you can see right down to the pollen why I was so happy that these bright little lilies popped up in my yard.

Sparkler

The red rose, white Pentas, white salvia and Salvia 'Black& Blue' barely constitute a floral sparkler let alone the explosion of color I was hoping to gather for a photo. Real fireworks, legal or otherwise, can be heard around Austin on every Fourth of July. I like fireworks, but have always felt tense as bottle rockets flew over dried-out roofs in our usual hot, dry summers. They'll be very hard to light this year!

It's still pouring in Texas, and I wonder whether this photo of a puddle in the secret garden might be considered garden porn by those of you who need rain so badly. [Lilac and peony photos fit this category for me!] If you're in a drought area, may gentle, slow soaking rains fall on your gardens soon, allowing the waterlogged places [like Oklahoma City, which had 20 straight days of rain] to dry out a little.

MSS of Zanthan Gardens has concentrated on tomatoes lately and Pam/Digging has been away from her blog for a while. Well, while Pam is busy and you're missing her fabulous photos, my photos might look better ! Here are a few from my garden this week - some have rain and mist, others were taken in sun. When the rain stopped and the sun came out, I covered myself in mosquito spray and went out to weed and prune.

This unnamed oriental lily bloomed in a deck container for a few years, was planted in the ground in 2005, and is somehow living and blooming in our heavy clay soil. There have been a few flowers each year, but there were 10 buds this June - and they're huge, measuring 8-inches across when fully open.

In closeup this lily has little 'bumps' but no spots like the Stargazers. One flower in a vase puts out so much fragrance it can be overpowering inside the house.

The 'City of Portland' canna loves the moisture and keeps blooming. There's a little coral color blended into the brick of our house. This color sets off a war when something in the magenta/pink range is planted near the brick, but growing the cannas near the wall looks okay to me - what do you think?

Another Canna goes by several names, including 'Praetoria' and 'Bengal Tiger', and has striped foliage and orange flowers. I planted it in three places in my garden, liking how it looks near this 'Acoma' crepe myrtle and a self-seeded tropical milkweed, Asclepias curassavica, with Perovskia/Russian sage at the base .

The Zephranthes 'Labuffarosea' rainlilies opened a few flowers, but their numbers are down from last year. I don't think they like being waterlogged - some of the bulbs may have rotted underground.

Last year two Snail Vines, Phaseolous caracalla, ran rampant in my garden. One took over the garden arch and smothered the Coral Honeysuckle, leading me to evict it. The other one covered the metal obelisk so densely that the structure was invisible, but I liked the flowers, so let it finish the season.

Once free of the annual snail vine, the Coral honeysuckle did well, and has taken over the arch. It's been showing off those flowers nonstop since March, framing the garden and attracting hummingbirds.

I planted seeds for Moonvine, Ipomoea alba, and Blue Pea Vine, Clitoria ternatea, at the base of the obelisk a couple of months ago - actually planting them twice, since the first seeds never sprouted. The second set of seeds sprouted and are twining up the metal bars, but are not yet blooming. I like the way the obelisk looks this year, and am not in a big hurry for the flowers. The birds seem delighted with the exposed framework - a hummingbird likes to perch on the crossbar in between sips at the Buddleja, honeysuckle and Salvias and it's also a favorite hangout for the wrens.

I hope you're all having a safe and happy holiday, with some sparkle in your evening.

Your Mission, Should You Choose to Accept it...

Does anyone else find it impossible to pass the ‘Rescue Table’ without at least taking a look? It’s that section of a nursery where the dried–up, the bloomed-out and the too-late-for-this-season sit abashed in their liners, hanging their heads in dishonor under the sign of ‘clearance’. The price might be a couple of dollars, or maybe a quarter. Annie/Diva claims to have found a few of her exotic treasures for a dime, but she’s got bargain radar extraordinaire. A lot of these bargains turn up at the big box stores, so we always use the garden entrance, even when buying filters for the air conditioner or light bulbs.

It's not just the price – there’s something appealing about being the plant’s last hope, about taking something one step away from the trash and making it live. If the mission fails, there’s no disgrace when even the vendor had given up on the plant.
I don't look for shrubs or trees. Early maltreatment or root damage can show up years after you plant it, and I want the best possible permanent residents. I stick to ‘just for fun’ plants, those annuals and perennials that are interesting but not essential elements in the design.
One of the bargains that revived to bloom again were seen here on June 29th, the ‘Crème Brulee’ coreopsis. That was 3 months ago, and they’re still opening new flowers. Making it through winter without rotting won’t be easy for them in my clay ground, but I hope they’ll live to bloom again next summer.


An end-of-season bag containing 3 oriental lily bulbs was less than $2 a few years back. It was past mid-summer when I planted them in a good-sized container. They sat in semi-shade and were watered regularly. The soil was light with lots of humus, and there was a layer of wood chips on the bottom of the pot. Nothing happened that fall, but some stalks emerged the following spring – all leaves, no flowers. Another year, some time and care and the pot overflowed with fragrant lilies, in bloom when our house was up for sale. I brought the pot along when we moved here and planted them in the ground the next year. They didn’t do much last summer, but this July they bloomed again.

Sometimes you see cardboard cartons of clematis roots, with the roots enclosed in a plastic bag of peat moss. This is not the kind of clematis to buy if you’re putting together a garden – get one in a decent container from a good nursery. But I was just fooling around, trying to see what could grow in a container on a deck in Austin, Texas. One section of that deck was more test plot than garden. I noticed that one of the clematis in a carton on the clearance table seemed to have viable leaf buds, so I brought it home and potted it. It grew in that pot for a couple of years, making a substantial root system.
When it eventually bloomed, the Clematis was not the variety pictured on the cardboard, but I liked the color. I planted it near the back door when we moved here, with blue plumbago to shade the base. This August the clematis looked like heck, with most of the leaves turned crispy brown. But the stems retained a hint of green, and several weeks ago new leaves appeared, followed by buds, then once again, the purple flowers.


A decorative container with 9 dying lantana plants stuffed into it was $2, but lantana is basically a weed - all I had to do was get them out of the pot and into the ground.

I have to post this photo, too, and admit that I haven't won the plant rescue game every time.

I had such high hopes for this pitiful Alocasia ‘Hilo Beauty’, a deal at $2 instead of the original twenty. Bought last fall and looking ratty back then, too, this plant lived through our winter in a dormant state, and awoke in spring.

Will it ever forgive me for making it live in Austin this summer? My mission could still succeed if I'm patient and lucky.